Life, Art, Technology

Closet cleaning made easy

Yes. We love clothes. Shoes. Jewelry. Purses. We take good care of them, and our hearts flutters when someone compliments us on something we wear.

Unless you have a self organising black hole as a closet, at some point in time you will find yourself in one of this situations:

You come home after a very successful shopping day and you discover there’s no more space for your new additions.

You wake up one day, and you find yourself standing for a half an hour in front of the same filled closet, and thinking: Oh man, I have nothing to wear today!

If any of this sounds familiar, then….it’s time.

Time to clean your closet!

I’ll describe below the technique that I tried and it worked great, because:

it’s time effective

it allows me to focus on each category(shoes, clothes, accessories) individually

Divide and conquer technique

I’ve divided the closet cleaning project into 5 smaller projects.

1. Prepare for you closet cleaning party

Before starting to empty out my closets and start sorting through a mountain of clothes, there are some things to consider, that helped me reduce significantly the work load.

I first scheduled a full day for this, to make sure I finish everything.

What about the stuff I decide I don’t need?

Do you have sisters? Maybe they would love to raid you closet.

Look for some local charities to make some less fortunate women happy

Sell them online.This way you are improving you entrepreneur skills, make some extra money. Here and here you can find a few websites that sell worn clothes online and also offers a guide on how to do that.

I decided to give most of it to charity, and some of them I decided to sell them online. So, I prepared my camera for photos!

I made a plan. You would think that organising you closet is a piece of cake…NO, it is not. Depending on the size of the closet, you have some options:

Go big! Pull everything out and start sorting. If you have a big closet, which is probably your case, you will run into this issue: get overwhelmed by memories with each item you pick, you get overwhelmed by the decisions, the time runs out and in the end you end up putting most of the stuff back. You end up with some clothes to you need to give away, your closet is still full because you didn’t finish organising it, and you need to schedule another day to start this hole process over.

Divide and conquer: plan to split this into smaller tasks. This will save you a lot of time. For example:

group the types of clothes to organise and do them on different days(if they can’t be completed on the same day: shoes, jewelries, purses, winter clothes, summer clothes, etc.

group the activities: sort all the clothes and get rid of them. On another day organise the left items back on the closet.

I decided on the latter approach.

I then analysed the closet, in order to buy the things I miss, before starting the cleaning process. For example:

If you keep your sweaters and T-shirts on shelves, the disadvantage is that they are easily becoming a mess since stacks often fall over. Slide ‘N’ Stax Closet Organizer is a plastic clear piece with sides and a bottom that fits on the top shelf and you can just bring that one piece down when you need something, instead of tipping over your stacked items.

Lastly: I prepared myself a good playlist to help you go through the hard break-ups that will follow!

2. Start with the shoes

First, I prepared some boxes/bags for the shoes I don’t need anymore.

I then gathered all my shoes from all over the house – flip flops, sneakers, flats and heels – into the same place.

I made 3 piles:

shoes I like and wear

shoes that are too worn out to wear anymore

shoes I don’t wear anymore/I don’t like

shoes worth selling

I cleaned them. Dirt, dust and other residues could cause the material the shoes are made from to degrade over time. This is especially true for materials like leather or suede, but all shoes benefit from being cleaned up before storing them.

I put the third group of shoes in boxes and put them away

I organized them by type.I separate my sandals, sneakers, and boots.

I also organized them by how often I wear them. I put my favorite pair of boots, sandals, or sneakers in the place with the easiest access.

For space saving(and also because it looks fancier), I alternated all the shoes, head to toe.